Posts Tagged ‘Bombay’

This is an image of British soldiers, their wives and friends from 1/1st Kent Cyclists Battalion taken sometime between 1915 and 1919. They were at posted in Bangalore, Dalhousi, Deolali, Bombay, and then later at Lahore and Rawalpindi (now Pakistan). The sergeant sitting on the right is my grandfather A/S S.L Stonely. The image may have been photographed in Dalhousie before their posting to or from Rawalpindi. Dalhousie was a quaint hill station established in 1854 by the British Empire in India as a summer retreat for its troops and bureaucrats. Unfortunately, I do not know much about this image and I found it in a bunch of negatives sitting in an old box for years. Only recently I decided to get them digitised. It seems that several of these images were photographed by my grandfather, because the records show that Kent Cyclists Battalion had a Camera Club.

All I know is that my grandfather was a member of one of the Kent Cyclists Battalions which was formed before World War I. Upon being removed from regimental strength, in 1908, the Queen’s Own Regiment of cyclist soldiers was re-named as the Kent Cyclist Battalion, and at that time became the Army Troops attached to the Home Counties Division (Territorial Force). The military use of cycles had begun in the 1880’s when a number of the old volunteer battalions had set up Cyclist Sections, whose brief was to defend Great Britain in the advent of an invasion, being something akin to a part time rapid response unit. In 1915, the first units of the Army Cyclist Corps went to serve overseas, including India and were serving primarily in reconnaissance roles – as Dispatch Riders, engaged on traffic directing duties and also assisting in locating stragglers and wounded personnel on various battlefields.

The Battalion served very well, albeit for a very short while. The bicycle had not long ago been invented and originally was thought to be a good way to get soldiers to move around, but the cyclists often found themselves attempting to negotiate unfriendly terrain, and on numerous occasions were forced to abandon their heavy army issue bicycles. On rough terrains such as India’s they would get stuck in the mud and not much of use. With little future value, eventually, all Cyclists Battalions were disbanded in 1920. However, of all the various English, Scottish, and Welsh battalions that served during the Great War years, the 1st/1st Kent Cyclist Battalion was the sole battalion to be awarded battle honours. They were converted to infantry and used instead for foreign services in India.

On October 2, 1947, during partition, my father Anand Bakshi’s family was informed that within an hour or two their Mohalla- Qutabdeen in Chityian Hattian, Rawalpindi (now Pakistan) was going to be attacked by rioters and marauders belonging to another community. My father Anand, then 17 years old, his grandparents, father, step mother & step siblings, had only minutes to grab whatever money, clothes, personal effects, they could possibly carry with them. Hundreds of others and they fled from their homes, overnight. From Rawalpindi, the family travelled to Delhi via a small Dakota Air plane, (the plane was a bonus, because my great grandfather was at the time, the Superintendent of Police of Punjab Prisons in Rawalpindi.)

When the overnight displaced family reached Delhi in India, homeless and with only few valuables on them, my grandfather took stock of what everyone had managed to carry across the border. Upon seeing what my father had carried, in those moments of life threatening crisis, my grandfather was livid. Angrily he asked my father – ‘Why did you not carry valuables!? What useless things have you carried with you? How can we survive without our valuables? You should have carried some valuables!’ My father had carried what he had thought were valuables, a few family photographs; and particularly those of his mother.
He had lost his mother, Sumitra Bali, when he around 9 years old due to pregnancy related complications. On being yelled at, my father said to my grandfather – “Money we can earn when we find work, but if these photos of her were lost, no amount of money could ever bring them back for me. Pictures of her are all I have to live with, my entire life!”

The photograph above is one from the few my father had managed to save. This framed photograph found a place of immense pride on our home walls, in every house we shifted to and however big and fancy the houses got over the years with my father’s growing success.

At the time my father’s family fled, he had been serving the Royal Indian Navy for nearly three years, since the age of 14, as rank ‘Boy 1’ and he was registered as Anand Prakash. He served on board the ships H.M.I.S. Dilawar and H.M.I.S. Bahadur until 1946 and was dismissed from the Royal Indian Navy because of his participation in the revolt that took place at Karachi port against the British Empire. Post India and Pakistan partition, he joined the Indian army Corps of Signals, rank ‘Signal Man’, at Jubbulpore (now Jabalpur) and served for nearly six years.

On March 25, 1950 a poem of his was published in the Army publication ‘Sainik Samachar’. A published poem gave him the confidence to try his luck as a lyrics writer in Hindi films. After he qualified as a Switch Board Operator Class II, he resigned from the Army in April 1950, and traveled to Bombay in quest of his dreams. But with no breaks or opportunities forthcoming, he ran out of money. He returned to the army and enlisted with the E.M.E. – (The Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers), in February 1951, with the rank of “Ex-Boy”, and this time he registered as Anand Prakash Bakhshi. He qualified as “Electrician Class III” based at Jubbulpore and Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. In 1954, he got married to my mother, Kamla.

But yet again, after serving a total of seven years in the army, he took a voluntary discharge in 1956 and returned to Bombay, this time armed with 60 poems to find work. He also qualified himself as a motor vehicle driver as his ‘Plan B’ in case he didn’t succeed in finding a job as a song writer; he could always drive a taxi or work as a motor mechanic. History repeated itself, and within a few months in 1956, he ran out of money again and lost hope of ever making it as a song writer and despite the Plan B, he instead decided to return to his army job.

While sitting at the platform of Marine Lines station to take the train back home, a ticket inspector named Chitramal Swaroop caught my father without a valid ticket and asked him to pay a fine. My father had no money. Chitramal then asked him if he had eaten, bought him some food and asked him what he is doing in Bombay. My father told him of all that had happened and that he had lost all hope of becoming a lyrics writer and had decided to return to his army job, and his wife. A patient Chitramal then asked Anand to narrate a few of his poems. After hearing his works, an impressed Chitramal picked up my father’s tin suitcase and told him to follow him home. He led him to his Western Railway Quarters at Borivali, and allowed him to live there a few weeks until he found work. With only a few poems that he had heard, Chitramal had come to believe, and rightly so, that my father Anand was an exceptionally talented man.

Weeks became years and my father lived at Chitramal’s house at Borivali for nearly three years. Chitramal would even give him a pocket money of Rs. Two to eat and travel daily to meet producers and directors for work. I believe, my father Anand had two mothers, one who gave him birth, Sumitra Bali, and the other was Chitramal Swaroop; had he not stopped Anand Bakshi that day at Marine Lines station from returning to the army, the world of hindi cinema may never have discovered his poetry and lyrics.

By the end of 1956 he got his first break in a hindi film by Bhagwan Dada, a well known actor and film director. My father while sitting outside his office, overheard that a lyricist had not turned up, causing much stress to Dada. So my father walk into his office and told him he was a song writer, and he was immediately put on the job. But my father only got established by 1964, when the film Jab Jab Phool Khile became a huge hit. The songs were hugely popular across demographics and across the nation. After that, he found another big success with Milan in 1967; post that, he never lacked work until he lived. He wrote for the top most film producers and directors, several times for two generations of actors, producers and directors, until he passed away on March 30, 2002. He had by then written nearly 3300 Hindi song lyrics, for nearly 630 films. Some of his top songs, like the exceptionally famous “Dum Maro Dum” found cult status, and have been remixed and sampled by many other contemporary artists.

Looking at his work I am sure that the loss of and longing for his mother inspired him to write incredibly amazing and emotional lyrics. At least that is what he told us when he would get nostalgic and emotional, which was very often. Sometimes I even wonder what made my father survive the loss of his mother, the loss of his land of birth, youth, and an impoverished life because of partition for nearly two decades. The secret may lie in what he always said – “There is something inside of me superior to my circumstances, stronger than every situation of life.”

This picture was taken at my grandfather’s home, on the occasion of my aunt Zainab’s pre wedding ceremony. She was about to be married to a fireworks merchant. Zehra, was my mother Rubab and Zenab’s half sister.

My maternal grandfather Abdul Husain Motiwala, a Pearl Merchant, belonged to the Bohra Shia Community in Saurashtra (now Gujarat State). At the time, during the early 20th century, Saurasthra’s coast line had been a rich hub for pearl hunting, and trade was in the community’s blood. The word Bohra itself comes from the Gujarati word vehru (“trade”). As most merchants and families began to adopt and attach last names after the products they traded in, my grandfather’s name Motiwala too, literally translates as “Pearl Man”.
As a teenager, he decided to go to Bombay with Rs. 5 in hand, and landed up at the shop that dealt with pearls, for a job. Soon he grew in stature and bought the same establishment that he worked for. He turned the business around, made it hugely profitable and became one of the top businessmen of the community.

My grandfather was a liberal man and was inclined towards reformism. After the death of his first wife at a rather young age, and a young son to care for, he decided to marry Fatema, a young widow and mother to a daughter Zehra, from her own previous marriage. The Bohra community was hugely upset and wondered aloud as to ‘why this very rich and eligible man needed to marry a widow with a child, when there were so many other eligible proposals from the community.’

My grandfather Abdul Husain and Fatema, my grandmother, had three children together. With three daughters and two sons, it became a family of seven. Zehra and Zainab for some reason never got educated, while my mother and her brother studied up to 10th grade college. All the sisters got along very well. Two of whom were so close, that later while my father could afford a bigger house in Bombay, my mother insisted instead that we live next to my aunt Zenab’s house in a chawl (inexpensive community housing) near Bombay Central.

My grandfather Abdul Husain Motiwala was the first man in our community to own an American Kaiser car. He was so well respected that he was given the title of “Patel”. A surname that was used primarily by Hindus whose ancestors were traditionally landlords and owners, I suppose it had come to mean “Respected man”. People would shout from the streets as his car passed by- “Patel Saheb’s car has come!”

While Abdul Husain was one of the best businessmen around, he was keenly aware of his own hardworking background. He had great respect for the dignity of labour and had no sense of class discrimination. He, for instance did not go easy on his own son Kamruddin, and ensured that he worked very hard to earn his keep. Another instance was, when a proposal for Zehra came from a man in the community who had walked away from his own family business. With problems at home, he had decided to begin life on his own terms and became a taxi driver. My grandfather agreed to the proposal, perhaps because he knew his to be son-in-law to be a dignified & hardworking man. He helped him out with good advise and offered him loans to build a fleet of taxis in Bombay. The advise was taken but the money wasn’t, proving my grandfather right.

My mother Rubab or as she was fondly called Ruby, was the youngest and the most adored. So much so, that she like many of the youngest members in families enjoyed several liberties. Being exceptionally intrigued with photography, she would dress up in different attires & accessories and get herself photographed regularly by a photographer called Ahmed Zardi in the near-by photo studio called Dayzars.

My father Ahmed, a photographer, and my mother Ruby, the photographed, fell in love over pictures, and my grandfather accepted the relationship with great ease. My father became a regular visitor at my mother’s home and would take our family pictures ever so often, even before they got married. It was the first love marriage in our family.

Dayzars was a Photography studio in Bombay Central and was named after its two partners – Dayabhai from Rajasthan and my father Ahmed Zardi. They worked together for 32 years. As far as I know, it was uncommon for a Hindu and a Muslim to have such a great and long partnership. But when Dayabhai’s eyes began to fail him, he decided to leave Bombay and return home. My father and Dayabhai’s son tried to work together but a generational gap of ideas led him to relieve himself of the business and Studio Dayzars was sold. I was an only child and would frequent my father’s studio. I learnt how to handle cameras, developed film and made prints. The magic of the dark room was an incredible experience. However, I was absolutely not interested in studio photography and so I studied journalism and became an editorial photographer.

My grandfather, Dwarkadas Jivanlal Sanghvi (extreme right in a Black Coat) with his brother Vallabhdas Jivanlal Sanghvi and business partners. Bombay. Circa 1951

Image & Text contributed by Purvi Sanghvi, Mumbai

This picture is of my grandfather Dwarkadas Jivanlal Sanghvi and his brother Vallabhdas Jivanlal Sanghvi with their business partners at a Pen Exhibition in Bombay around 1951.

My paternal grandfather Dwarkadas Jivanlal Sanghvi was born in Rajula, in Gujarat on September 17, 1913 into an impoverished family. He was around the age of eight when his father died and because his mother Amrutben could not afford to bring him up, he was sent to a Balashram (Children’s home). He only managed to study up until 4th standard. At the age of 13 he went to Rangoon, Burma to join his elder brother, Vallabhdas Jivanlal Sanghvi who had moved there to work at a general store which sold cutlery and kitchen ware. As a young teenager, my grandfather would earn little money babysitting children in Rangoon.

Soon the enterprising brothers began buying fountain pens from traders and selling them on the pavements of Rangoon, making tiny profits. Meanwhile the entire family (their mother & sisters) also moved to Rangoon including the new wife my grandfather, at the age of 23 had travelled back to Gujarat to marry.

My father was born in 1939 in Rangoon, but then the World war II broke out, In 1941 the family chose to move to Calcutta (now Kolkata) where my grandfather Dwarkadas founded a whole sale trading company called Kiron & Co, named after my father whose name was Kiran (with an A), but when a Bengali sign painter instead spelt it as Kiron (with an O), with no time for corrections, the name stayed as painted. Both the company’s & my father’s.

The Brothers soon realized that good business beckoned them back to western India and they moved to Valsad, Gujarat and then to Bombay. In Bombay, Dwarkadas & his brother Vallabhdas invested in and installed a lathe machine in a small shed at Kasturchand Mill compound in Dadar west and began manufacturing most of the Pen parts by themselves. I think Dhiraj Manufacturing was my grand-uncle Vallabhdas’s venture but both companies traded in Wilson as well.

In the beginning, the Nibs were imported from USA, under the brand names of Sita & Sity. However, as an error the supplier sent them a box of Nibs called Wilson instead. The war was a huge obstacle to sending the consignment back so they had no choice but to start making the pens with the un-returnable nibs. With the entire pen rebranded as Wilson, the pen sold far better than they expected and yet again another mistaken name was retained.

By the mid 1940s the business grew and they had begun manufacturing all pens from scratch. The Manufacturing units moved to Andheri East and to Chakala. And they also introduced other brands such as the President. With almost a 1200 people as staff, there were people from almost all communities working together; A lot of women were hired for the first time. While the machines were worked by men, all the assembling of the pen was done entirely by women. Their daily salary at the time was around Rs. 3 to 4 per day. Meanwhile my grandfather taught himself to read, write and speak in English at the age of 42, because he understood that knowing English was important for modern businesses to grow.

Wilson Pens quickly rose to huge fame and became a preferred choice of pens across the country. All government offices, law court, used the Wilson pens. In School too, the teachers would ask us for Wilson Pens as gifts. Chippi chawl was the wholesale office that was visited by salesmen from all over the country who came to negotiate and buy pens and other Wilson stationery. Soon the pens were also being exported to several countries.

In 1961-62 a huge union strike set up the family businesses for hard times. The pressures were hard to handle and so the Brothers split their business by picking chits (draw of luck) of the businesses they would run. Vallabdas got President Pens and my grandfather got Wilson along with the Refill plant (an Italian collaboration) that came into my grandfather and his sons share.

For some time the businesses ran as smoothly as they could. Both the brothers’ children set up their own units and began manufacturing all kinds of pens. We made Refills, Ball pens, VV pens, Jotters, Jumbos. Several of the new designs were also imitated by new and upcoming businesses.

Another violent and strife-full union strike in the early 1980’s organized by the infamous trade union leader Dutta Samant (lasted for approx. ten months) closed down our businesses for a while (including several others’ in Bombay), but it was the last and the third strike in 1998 that broke our businesses completely apart and my grandfather & father had no choice but to shut everything down yet again. So hard was the last fall that my father and grandfather just could not find in themselves the courage to start all over again.

Towards the end of his life, Dwarkadas spent most of his time at home. He had since long harboured deep regrets about not being very educated and hence at his voluntary retirement he donated a lot of money for education. He founded and funded almost four to five educational institutions. DJ Sanghvi Engineering College, in Ville Parle (Mumbai), Amrutben Jivanlal College of Commerce (earlier a part of Mithibhai College) also in Mumbai, Jivanlal Anandji High school in Rajula, Gujarat and another school nearby in Amreli District.

In 2002, the Pioneer of Pens in India, my grandfather Dwarkadas passed away.

Of the several interesting family stories about Wilson, one in particular that makes me most proud is when I learnt that we the Wilson Pen Family, made the orange, thick-nibbed pen that wrote the most fundamental document that defines the state of India: The constitution of India written by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. It was later confirmed via several sources. I am very sure it made my grandfather very very happy and immensely proud too.

This is a picture taken in the late 50s by my dad Mr. O S Joseph and each time I look at it, it evokes several fond memories of my childhood.

The four-storied building seen behind is Rustom Baug in Byculla, a Parsee colony in Bombay. Every year on first monsoon rains my dad would make me stand by the white pail. “having bath in the first rain cures you of all illnesses” he would say. In retrospect, I now see why that spot was good because all the water from the tiles converged at that spot.

I have no memory of this picture being photographed but I will also never forget the Kelkar family. Our next door neighbours. Here Mrs. Kelkar is with her daughter Shalini. I used to call her Aai (mother in Marathi) Aai was more conversant in Marathi than with Hindi and my Marathi wasn’t very good, but we used to get along well. She used to pamper me a lot.

I remember the Kelkars had a huge radio in their drawing room (living room) with high ceilings built by the British. But what fascinated me more was the extension speaker, which was in the kitchen. I used to sit on the small stool in the kitchen observing her as she went about happily doing her daily chores of cutting vegetables, cooking, heating the water for husband’s bath and all the while singing a very famous marathi song “Me dolkara, dolkara dolkara dariyacha raja, Vallhav re nakhwa ho vhallav re rama” along with the the radio on India’s only radio network at the time, All India Radio. I remember deciding then, that when I grow up and have my own house I will listen to the radio and have an extension speaker in every room.

The best time to be in the Kelkar’s house was during the “festival of lights” Diwali, or rather the month before Diwali because of the lovely aroma of the sweets being made in the kitchen. I had free access to all the sweet boxes and it was one of the reasons why my dad forbade me several time to go there during Diwali. Sharad, Aai’s eldest son was another influential figure during my childhood. The way he would construct the aakash kandil (paper lantern) was nothing short of perfection. He was very forthright & responsible and even though I could not understand much Marathi at the time, I could make out that he was someone who had some principles and was fair in all dealings.

Today, I don’t have an extension speaker but a radio sits in my bed-room and is almost always on for 24 hours. There is nothing better than listening to the good old songs.

His name was Bhalchandra Ambadas Haldipur. He was my grandfather and we fondly called him ‘Daddy’. In this photograph he was being awarded the President’s Police & Fire Service Medal, highest achievement award for a police officer in that year.

Bhalchandra Ambadas Haldipur or Daddy was the only person I have ever been scared of. And that fear came from the immense respect I had for him and for the school of discipline he belonged to. I was all of 10 years old when Daddy passed away in 1992. But he left behind a few things which were to influence me for the rest of my life. Deep-rooted values and beliefs, a memory of his charming personality and the aura he impressed everyone one with, be it family or friends, his tongue-in-cheek humour in the most difficult times, and his last words to me.

My grandfather, Bhalchandra Ambadas Haldipur joined the Bombay City Police in 1939 as Sub-inspector , Thoroughly “clean” and incorruptible, he was known for his tireless and thorough investigations, and fearless drive against crime during his hectic career spanning 36 years in the Police Force. Whether working in the Crime Branch or Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), he remained a courageous, fearless crime-fighter who led his men from the front.

Sifting through the album with yellowing sheets of these sketches, my grandmother said –

“Daddy was part of the special cell to trace Gandhiji’s assassins. A team set out to scour the country for the absconders soon after January 30, 1948. And he was asked to track Apte and Karkare, two co-conspirators of Nathuram Godse in the assassination. He was posted in the Red Fort, Delhi during the entire trial period. For his records, he drew portrait sketches of whomsoever he met – be it the then DSP of Delhi , a sub-inspector at Gwalior, a tailor from Pune or an IAF official. During the chase, for weeks he did not come home, and we never knew where he was. You are lucky to live in the age of mobile phones. I wish I had some such help to avoid sleepless nights wondering where and how he was. He survived on eating raw eggs and followed leads on the two assassins from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh to Ahmednagar (their hometown), in Maharashtra. During daylight he would go hunting and chasing leads on both with guns and at nights, he sketched with pencil, portraits of those he had met or interrogated. The day Apte and Karkare checked into Pyrkes Apollo Hotel near Regal Cinema in South Bombay under assumed names, Daddy finally nabbed them after waiting there for them for seven hours.”

Daddy became a key official in the Justice Kapur Commission set up by the Govt. Of India to investigate the various events that led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. During the completion of 150 years of Mumbai Police Commissionerate, he was declared as one of the most important Police Officers from the Bombay Police division to have significantly contributed to the country in the immediate post-independence era. But he never discussed his work at home or spoke about his achievements and never let anyone promote him either. All he said was, “I am working for the public and not for publicity.”

Daddy was also so much more than a great police officer. He was a body builder and a Pole Vault Gold medalist at the National Olympics in 1940. A multi-linguist, he had passed three examinations in Urdu while in service. He also initiated the Annual Ganesh Chathurthi festival at Santacruz Police Station in Bombay. After he retired in 1975 as the Deputy Commissioner of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) he was one of the founder members of the Senior Citizens’ Club of Bombay. He was a music and instrument buff, a loving husband, father and grandfather.

If I had a time machine, I would have had only one wish – more time with Daddy but I’m also glad that I have no such privilege because he would have only been disheartened to live and watch the country today, rotting with corruption and indiscipline.
I have been wanting to share my grandfather’s story for a long time now. He always makes my heart swell with pride and brings the widest smile. He is the hero, my Idol.

We lived in Shivaji Park, Bombay in a house that our families had lived in for eight generations. My father‘s name was Tulsiram Pawar and my mother’s was Chandra Bai. My grand-mother who lived until the age of 101, used to work in the municipality as a road sweeper. My father also worked for the municipality of Shivaji Park, cleaning garbage. But he was an alcoholic, most of the times drunk and incapable of working. He would beat up my mother and abuse her all the time, but she gulped all the pain and began working instead of him. She is the one who earned and brought us all up. Her salary at the time was only Rs. 200 a month, so it was tough on her. Most men in the chawl were in similar jobs and were all drunks & wife beaters, exactly like my father. All the girls in the chawl were scared to get married anticipating the same future.

My family belonged to the Mahar Caste, considered untouchables and of low caste in India. But we all got saved when my parents adopted the beliefs preached by Babasaheb, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. If it wasn’t for him, we would have been on the streets or dead, of hunger or indignity. My parents converted to Buddhism following Ambedkar’s encourgement and since then we have been restored our dignity.

We are four sisters and two brothers. I was born on November 13, 1963. In school I studied up to class 10 (sometimes as night classes). I used to love dancing, participated in school events and played everyone’s favourite sport at the time Kho Kho. Embroidery was another skill I learnt from the women in the Chawl. On Saturdays & Sundays we would finish the house-work faster so we could rush to watch Marathi movies in a quarter that had a B&W television.

In 1982, when I was 18 my parents got me married. The chosen husband was Vishnu Rama Kapse. He was 15 years older to me. When our parents asked us to marry, we just did, there was no argument or discussion over it. My mother said that they were a well to do family, and they eat a lot, and so I will be happy. Later I heard, that my husband too didn’t want to really get married, but others advised him that he needed a partner who could also contribute to earnings. The wedding was all paid-for by my mother. I think she must have spent Rs. 5000 on it. As was tradition for the In-Laws to do, my actual name Satyabhama was changed to Smita by my husband, but my mother-in-law couldn’t pronounce it so she began calling me Sunita, and now everyone calls me Sunita.

This photograph is from my wedding reception in a small hall in Bandra, Bombay. With us is my husband’s regular employer (since he was a child), Mrs. Ula and her family. They really loved us. Now they live in USA.
I am wearing a Blue saree and my husband wore a Grey suit. In Buddhism, during the actual ceremony we wear white, not red as is the norm of most Indian weddings. With our dharma guru as witness, we exchange garlands, listened to a short sermon and that was it, we were married. There were around 200 guests for our wedding. The gifts we received were currency notes of Rs. 2 or 5 in small packets. I got married into a very large family, with mother, sister, brother and cousin in laws.

My husband was a simple decent looking man. He respected, and loved me passionately. He never hit me or embarrassed me in-front of anyone. He used to say “If I disrespect you in-front of someone else, they won’t respect you”. That is the reason my children respect me too, because that is what they saw. My husband really loved me, showered me with attention, but I am aware that he was also afraid that I might leave him, because I was a good looking and to top it, 15 years younger. That is the reason he never wanted to live away from the large family because he felt it kept me in check. I always found it very amusing but in a way it imparted a lot of self-confidence. We were great partners & friends and would never do anything without consulting each other. My husband would keep me updated on current affairs of the world. When I couldn’t understand, he would explain everything patiently.

My husband’s family came from Ratangiri and his family owned a lot of agricultural land there. But once the Dam and new railway tracks began to be constructed, many new people came and grabbed most of our land and so many of us, also from near by villages, were left with almost nothing. We still have a legal case going on but I doubt anything will happen.

Like thousands of others, my husband at the time in the 1980s was working in the Textile Mill, breaking yarn. When the mill shut down (called the Great Bombay Textile Strike), he began working as a wall painter, or as daily labour (also for the family in the picture). The same year my eldest daughter Annapurana was born, but the earning was not enough for us, so I began working as a domestic maid. My first monthly salary was Rs. 75 with a Sitan Family here in Bandra, I have now worked for them for 32 years and I still work there. Then we had a second child Abhijeet, a son and a third another daughter, Priyanka. My husband and I worked very hard and educated all three of my kids. They went to government municipality schools, and then they went to college. Fortunately for us they are now married into good families.

I never chose to be a maid, but I did it because if I didn’t work we couldn’t earn. And with my experience, being a good and honest maid was the best I could do. My husband would not give me all the money he earned, because some of it was kept for his brothers and their families whom he supported largely. So I too saved, keeping money aside and buying gold as an investment without him knowing, but the amusing part was he knew all along. I always worked around the Bandra, as it was close to home. The Parsi family next to our home sold their land and in its place a mosque was built. But we all casts and religions lived along as good neighbors cordially, perhaps because we were Buddhists and non-violent. In-fact in times of conflict in Bombay, the muslims neighbours always came around to check if we are okay.

My normal routine everyday for years was getting up at 6 am, pack my husband’s and kids lunch tiffin, go do all my work and return by 2 pm to fill water that would only come in taps twice a day. I learned a lot by working as a maid, like cooking different Indian Cuisines from my employers and then I would try it all at home. My family loved my cooking. Even when my daughter got married, I had every feast cooked at home. I have been lucky that all my employers respected and taught me a lot. Looking at our employers helped us aspire for a better lifestyle. But one thing that makes me sad is how people spend on things much more than they need to. Wasting food is probably the biggest problem I see in so many households, the wealthier the families the more food is wasted. But people and women are also more independent and that is admirable, though I still get worried if my daughter doesn’t come home on time.

In 2006, my husband developed a heart problem and he began to keep unwell often. So I got a couple of more jobs and continued working as a maid cooking, cleaning, sweeping, and washing to earn enough to pay for his medical bills. Many employers too helped with the medical bills. But in 2012 his health worsened and he passed away. I now continue to work as a maid, because if I didn’t work I would go crazy. Because of my children, I am not struggling for money, but it is good for me, it makes me independent, I work in places I like to work, I am respected and I get to step out. But I really miss my husband a lot. He was my friend, my protector, my partner of life. I really feel alone and cry when I think of him, but I thank Buddha and Sai baba because of whom I have great children, siblings and their families.

This is the only image of my great grand-father, Vasu Deva Sharma, in our family archives. It shows him working as an artist in a photo studio in Berlin. Dressed impeccably in a well-tailored suit, he poses in front of an easel with a brush in hand, with the canvas depicting a portrait of a possibly aristocratic European lady. Vasu Deva Sharma was one of the rare Indians of his time who studied at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London in the 1920s.

Vasu Deva Sharma was born on June 15, 1881 to Pandit Bhagwan Das in Pakpattan Sharif, District Montgomery, Punjab, (now in Pakistan). In 1910, he passed the Senior Vernacular Teachers Certificate Examination (Punjab Education Department) and in 1911 he joined Central Training College, Lahore as a Drawing Professor. The same year he married Saraswati Devi and on December 3, 1912, the couple had a son, Ved Prakash Sharma (my grandfather) and a daughter Ved Kumari in 1914. Tragically, in 1915 Saraswati Devi passed away and as joint families would, his brother Pandit Bhim Sen and sister-in-law Kaushalya Devi helped raise the two children.

In 1920, at the age of 39, Vasu Deva Sharma gave up his job at the Central Training College, Lahore after receiving a scholarship to study at Royal College of Art. He sailed from Bombay to London on the ship Kaisar-I-Hind on the P&O line, and arrived in London on September 25, 1920. (Source : The National Archives, UK – Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960; www.ancestry.com)

Upon his arrival in London he stayed in a furnished apartment at 12, Eardley Crescent, Earls Court, SW. His first term studies at RCA began with a basic course in Architecture and Lettering. His first term student file (which I sourced from the RCA archives in 1995), remarks: “Inexperienced in European design and draughtsmanship. Indefatigable in his studies. Has made rapid progress. Shows great promise.”
His second term began with Painting and it included studying Art teaching methods for provincial Art schools in Britain, The study also had him travelling to other parts of the country, away from London.

My father Kul Bhushan, (an active researcher on Vasu Deva Sharma’s legacy) recounts an interesting anecdote by a family relative that reveals information on his final RCA presentation. Apparently Vasu Deva Sharma wanted to paint an iconic scene from Indian history – Maharana Pratap‘s battle against the Mughuls and to obtain authentic proportions of Maharana Pratap’s horse and the Mughul Emperor’s elephant, he visited the London Zoo and obtained special permission to measure a horse and an elephant!

In 1923, his final year at RCA, he moved to another accommodation, the Sikh Boarding House at 79, Sinclair Road, W.14, alongwith some fellow students. As for his progress in his final year studies, the remarks in his student file state: “Plodding, ambitious of improvement, industrious, this Indian student has taken full advantage of the methods and initiative a European School of Art can offer.”
He graduated with an A.R.C.A. – Associateship in ‘Decorative Painting’, Royal College of Art. The graduation ceremony was held on July 20, 1923 and diplomas were presented by Sir Montague Barlow, Minister of Labour. Vasu Deva sent his graduation cap and gown to his then widowed sister-in-law Kaushalya, as his ‘earnings’.

In 2012, I managed to source the graduation photo of his class from RCA which included names of now renowned British art icons like sculptors Sir Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and even more interestingly, his fellow graduates included two other Indians – Uday Shankar Choudhry and the famous painter-engraver Mukul Dey from Calcutta (now Kolkata).

Following graduation, Vasu Deva embarked on an extensive tour of Europe to study original works of art in museums. Not much is known apart from the fact that the travels spanned Scandinavia, France, Germany, Italy and Greece. While his family’s support funded his travels, it is very possible that he also worked as a commissioned artist to earn an extra income. But to imagine a traveling Indian artist in Europe at such an important time in the continent’s history makes my great grandfather’s story a fascinating adventure.

This picture (circa 1925) was taken by a German photographer named Karl Alexander Berg with his studio address at Joachimstaler Strasse in Berlin, Germany. Looking at the stamp under the photograph one can conjecture that Berg was appointed to the German Royal Court.

In 1927, Vasu Dev returned to Lahore. By sea cargo, he sent around 30 suitcases and boxes full of art books, art reproductions, art materials, studio cameras, complete studio equipment and hundreds of other art objects, garments and personal effects. Interestingly, the photography equipment he brought was for his son (my grand-father, Ved Prakash Sharma) who later opened a photo studio in Lahore called Omega Photo Art Studio.

Vasu Deva Sharma joined Chief’s College in Lahore as an arts professor while practising as a professional artist for commissioned portraits. According to some family sources, he was also commissioned by Indian royal families, such as the Royals of Chamba, in North India.

In 1929, he began constructing a bungalow at 30A Empress Road, Bibian Pak Daman, near Shimla Hill, Lahore. For furnishing his bungalow, one of his students at Chief’s College – a Prince of Chamba – gifted him a railway wagon full of the best timber around. In addition to making furniture, Vasu Deva made seven easels to teach art to his students at home and he gifted away some. A cupboard made from this wood still stands in a family relative’s home in New Delhi. It is important to note the very significant connection between the then RCA president Sir William Rothenstein (from 1920-35) and Indian art. Rothenstein took a keen interest in Mughal paintings. He traveled extensively to British India to research Indian art and in 1910 established an India Society to educate the British public about Indian arts. According to my father’s recollections, Rothenstein traveled again to India in 1944. He visited my great-grand father at his mansion (that also housed his studio and artworks), in Lahore to see how his former RCA student was doing. As a six year old boy, my father recalls that this was a major event for which Vasu Deva also summoned his son Ved Prakash, my grandfather, to come from Pakpattan to Lahore and welcome Rothenstein.

A year before the partition of India and Pakistan following the end of British rule, Vasu Deva Sharma who suffered from Diabetes, slipped into a coma with paralysis and passed away on February 6, 1946, at the age of 65.

Soon after his death, his son Ved Prakash was appointed manager of Punjab National Bank in Ahmedabad and he and his family moved to Gujarat just before the nation wide violent partition riots of August 1947. The few belongings that the family members in Lahore could save were Vasu Deva’s original RCA diploma and this photograph from Berlin. It is understood that the mansion was ransacked and looted and they were unable to salvage the artworks and invaluable artefacts which were left behind in the mansion.

My father Kul Bhushan visited Lahore in 1977 and went to Empress Road to see the family home. By then, it had been turned into a housing estate with many apartments. But he noticed that the original marble name plate outside the house was still there, mentioning Vasu Deva Sharma’s name in English with his RCA degree mentioned below. Today the site is a commercial building with no hint of the past and no trace of the name plate either.

As a filmmaker and a photographer, one of my main projects these days is to search for any surviving artworks by Vasu Deva Sharma which could be in the UK, Europe, Pakistan and India. I would be very interested, if anyone may have any information on that. For more information that I have found on him you can visit here.

This photograph of my parents K. M. Devaki Amma & Lt. Cdr. P.P.K. Menon was taken at a Photo Studio in Bombay in 1941, soon after they were married. My father was based in the city serving the Naval Force.

My mother, K. M. Devaki Amma belonged to Feroke, a part of Kozhikode in Kerala. Her initials K. M. stood for Kalpalli Mundangad and her family originally belonged to the Anakara Vadkath lineage. The large joint family of more than 25-30 people lived in a house called Puthiyaveedu which still exists in Feroke, however the members are now settled in far flung places and my grand aunts and uncles are no more.

My mother had to give up school very early in life. She came from a large family of 14 brothers and sisters and belonged to an era where a girl’s formal education wasn’t a priority. While they grew up under the tutelage of grand uncles and aunts, they learned to cook, clean, and learnt to make do with and share whatever little they had with their siblings without ever complaining. Congee (Rice Gruel) was what they mostly had for lunch and dinner, supplemented with a little coconut chutney, and may be a side dish of some green banana, but only if they were bestowed with a ripe bunch of plantains available from the kitchen garden.

My mother and her sisters’ daily life entailed preparing food for all members of their very large family. By the light of a wick lamp, sweating by the blaze of crackling coconut fronds they would wash dishes with ash from the kitchen hearth and rinse them with water drawn from the well. My mother in personality was very self-reliant and was happy with whatever little she had.

Arranged by my paternal grandmother, when Amma married my father, a man with an aristocratic lineage and a Naval officer, my father’s cousins would scoff at her and condescendingly regard her as a ‘village girl’. They had been educated in Queen Mary’s Women’s college, Madras (now Chennai) whereas my mother had studied only up to Class IV in a local village school in Karrinkallai.

Undeterred, my father, who knew his wife was a bright and intelligent woman took her under his wing and brought out the best in her. He taught her English and bought her abridged versions of books written by Charles Dickens, Walter Scott and many other great authors. He read out passages to her and patiently explained to her what they each meant.

Thus Devaki, my mother, slowly emerged from her rural background, and became a lady endowed with great poise and charm. Not only did she steal my father’s heart, but even of those who befriended her. She became a much sought after friend by wives of both British and Indian naval officers. She taught them to cook Malayali dishes and stitch & embroider; skills, which were executed by her exquisitely. She wrote and spoke English with such assurance that she could put a present day Post Graduate in English to shame. But despite all these changes, she remained loyal to her roots, proud of her humble origins, and very attached to her siblings.

Sometimes, deep into the night I would catch whispers of my parents’ conversation as they sat and planned the monthly budget, and spoke about their dreams of providing us with the best of every thing. It was my mother who insisted that my sister and I be given the best education they could afford. She firmly refused a State Board SSC education, and insisted on us being admitted into schools which followed a Senior Cambridge syllabus. She was efficient and fiercely independent. By comparison I was a pale shadow. In fact, many times I used to feel very unsure of my self in her presence, intimidated by her indomitable spirit and the complete control she had over any situation.

When my father was suffering Cancer, she stood by him; nourishing him with love and healthy food, while my sister and I watched our father’s condition worsen by the day, helpless and often giving in to tears. My mother always remained calm, but only when he breathed his last in 1977 did she break down completely. He was her life force, and she was his guiding light. Theirs was an extraordinary relationship, always supportive of each other at all times and completely committed to each other till the end.

After I graduated, it was her dream that I put my education to good use. However, a few years after marriage when I was forced to give up my teaching post, she never forgave me till she breathed her last. To make up for it, I began to write and put together a collection of short stories, but the book never got published.
What pained me most was that I was not able to place a copy of my book in my mother’s hands and make my peace with her before she passed away in 2008.

This letter carries with it an amazing story that always has me grin ear to ear with joy.

My family are Anglo Indians and until a few years ago lived in a family bungalow in Ville Parle in Bombay. My father Benjamin John Smith was a Customs officer in Bombay and perhaps one of the few honest black sheep amongst the white embroiled in dishonest deeds. To get relief from tough days at the office, my father would find release with music. He was adept at both reading and writing music, played several instruments and when opportunity called he even travelled with the famed Paranjoti Choir all over the world.

At one such opportunity he travelled to Tours in France with the choir in 1966. The members of the choir were usually put up by local classical music aficionados at their homes in each city; and a certain Dr. Boulard and his family were to be my father’s kind hosts in Tours.
The day my father reached the Doctor’s mansion, eagerly awaiting him at the gate was the Doctor’s son, a 6 year old French boy, Jean, who had waited for my father in anticipation of seeing an Indian for three whole days. At first sight and to his shock the boy ran inside and wept copiously to his father, complaining “Where are his feathers!?” Clearly my brown father in a suit and tie was not the “Indian” he was expecting.

Despite the initial disappointment, my father and Jean became very fond of each other and when he returned to India, dad told me that Jean reminded him of me, that I would really get along with him, and Jean would write to me and I should reply. Jean and I soon embarked on establishing a pen-pal relationship writing letters to each other. I was curious about France and he about India and our lives. He would write me in French and I in English. Finding a french translator in Bombay at the time not an easy task but I had one at home, my father. Later Jean began writing in English which he was learning while studying to become a Doctor.

Over the years we wrote several letters to each other. In some letters I would find that Jean had packed in half used pencils and I always wondered why he would send me those as presents. As time passed, somewhere through those years our letters became infrequent and we lost touch.

Many years later in early 2011, I was travelling with a theatrical production all over Europe and also to Tours. I remembered Jean and pestered my manager to trace his whereabouts. All I knew about him was that he had become a Doctor and his parent’s address that was well etched in my memory.

Before our performance in Tours, my manager took me aside to say he had a surprise. Back stage was not Jean as you would expect but his mother, Mrs. Boulard who spoke with me in French via a translator. I could tell she was cautious about me and wasn’t about to start believing my stories about some letters and my friendship with Jean until I mentioned a family fact that very few people knew about. Astounded, she suddenly broke into English, albeit still a little cautious. She wouldn’t reveal her son’s whereabouts; instead she insisted that I leave my number with her, for her son to return the call.

With no news from Jean, and ready to leave to perform the play in Le Mans, a city 200 Kms away from Paris, I finally received a phone call and was completely overjoyed to hear a voice that said it was Jean. For two whole hours we chatted away excitedly, catching up on our lives and he was going to drive down to Aulnay-Sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris where I was performing two days later, with his girlfriend to meet with me.

It was one the most emotional and joyful moments of my life, to meet a close friend from my childhood I had never met, in our conversations we also discussed our letters and I asked him the question I had wanted to for years. “Why the half used pencils?” His answer was that he was told that India was a very poor country and he sent me the pencils because he assumed I couldn’t afford them! We laughed a lot and recollected much of our childhood and news of our families. It was simply a great great day.

A few months ago, Jean sent me this letter that I had written to him when my father passed away. It immediately reminded me of the time that was indeed very vulnerable, and the person I knew whom I could express it with was Jean.
The personalised letter-head this letter and many others were written on, was an earned luxury. It was a marketing promotion of a very popular chewing gum brand called A1, whose exchange offer was – personalised stationary for filling up an album with their wrappers that had images of country flags, cars, ships and aircrafts. It was a huge rage at the time for children my age in Bombay.

It is incredible how life is dotted with amazing presents, be it with a great father, incredible music, theatre, half used pencils, personalised letter-heads, chewing gums, and most magnificently an unexpected reunion of a grand friendship with Dr. Jean Christophes Boulard; with whom I am in touch yet again, on email.

My father, Shailendra (extreme right with a cigarette in his hands) came from a very humble background. As a young boy in Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan) he used to sing Bhajans (Religious Songs) in temples but after my grandfather lost all his money, they relocated to Mathura (Uttar Pradesh). It seemed that the times were always hard on his family. By 1948 he was an apprentice at a Railway workshop in Bombay and was struggling to make ends meet. Poetry, however was his savior & first love, and he wrote about social issues of the time and would often be invited to recite his poems at small cultural events. He came from Bihar,had lived in Rawalpindi, Mathura which made him skilled in various hindi & urdu dialects and their expressions.

On one such evening at a Poetry Soiree organised by the Progressive Writers’ forum, my father’s recitation of his poem on Partition of India, titled “Jalta Hai Punjab” caught the attention of another attendee, actor and director Raj Kapoor. It was about the massacre of Hindus and Muslims alike during partition and how it left those who witnessed it scarred for life.
Raj Kapoor, who introduced himself to Baba as Prithviraj Kapoor’s son, insisted that he wanted the same poem for his then under production film Aag. Of course the firebrand poet that my father was, and barely 25 years old, he refused point blank with a terse comment “My poetry is not for sale!” Raj Kapoor then scribbled his name and address on a piece of paper and told him “If ever you change your mind, this is where you will find me”.

I think Baba’s genius was in his ability to express the deepest and most profound thoughts in plain and simple Hindi. His songs thus reached out to the masses but without compromising on their literary appeal.

His genius also lay in expressing a grievance without offense. In an industry where composers would recommend lyricists to producers, Shankar-Jaikishan promised Shailendra that they would recommend him around, but then forgot about it. Baba then sent them a note with the lines, “Chhoti Si Yeh Duniya, Pehchaane Raaste Hain. Kahin To Miloge, Phir Poochhenge Haal” (The world is small, the roads are known. We’ll meet sometime, and ask ‘How do you do?). Realizing the hidden meaning in the message, Shankar-Jaikishan then not only apologized but turned the lines into a popular song. The song was then featured in the film Rangoli (1962)

He also produced the film Teesri Kasam based on a story by Phaneswar Nath Renu for which he was awarded the President’s Gold Medal. The film was initially considered a failure and took a toll on Baba, but ironically over time won huge critical acclaim and is now considered a huge success.

Interestingly, Barsaat was the first film for all four people in this photograph. And Baba wrote lyrics for each and every Raj Kapoor film thereafter with Mera Naam Joker as his last. He passed away on December 14, on the birthday of his mentor Raj Kapoor. I think what Hasrat Jaipuri once stated in a TV-interview was accurate “Shailendra was the best lyricist the Indian film industry ever had.” His songs would never let us and his future generations forget that.

At the time this photograph was taken, my mother was in her third year of her employment with the State Police of Maharashtra and was on an official trip to Agra. The purpose of this journey was to return an abducted girl, a native of Uttar Pradesh who was found and rescued by the police in Bombay (Mumbai).

After the girl was returned safely to her parents, my mother Meenakshi and a female colleague accompanied by a male senior staff had a few hours to spare before their train’s departure to Bombay. My mother wanted to visit the Agra Fort but her colleague wanted to see the Taj Mahal. Eventually she agreed to visit the Taj Mahal, where this picture was taken by a local photographer.

My mother is the second eldest amongst five siblings, and was born to Yashwant & Shalini Surve in Chiplun, a sleepy village at the time in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra.

When my grandfather Yashwant, a farmer, suffered huge losses in his grocery business, he had no choice but to relocate to Bombay in search for a better job. My grandmother along with all the children moved to her maternal home and took up odd farm jobs to add to the sustenance. After many years of struggling, my grandfather eventually did find a job in Dalda company and could afford a princely sum of Rs 500 to buy an apartment in the suburbs of Bombay, only then he had his family to move to Bombay.

New to a big city, and with five children, my grandparents’ means were limited, so the family set up a Milk delivery service, in which all their children pitched in. My mother too enrolled herself in a Tailoring Institute in hope of finding a job ; and she also applied for Government employment. A few days later, she received a call from the employment agency informing her on an unconsidered avenue, recruitment for the Police Force.

My grandfather accompanied her to the recruitment center. But skeptical of the type of candidates he saw there, he was discouraged and asked her not to give the exam, yet my mother went ahead and also got selected for the Force. At the training camp, she was the only one with her own blanket.

An employment with the State Government was an achievement for the entire family. The nature of the job and the independence it brought with it shaped my mother’s personality. She was the first in the family to travel out of state or to even own a pair of Sunglasses.

While growing up, we would be fascinated by all the stories that she would tell us about her work. On the rare occasions that we were taken to the Police station, seated on the bench for 2 hours my sister and I would gather enough visuals and sounds to boast to our friends, including the Dal and Pao (Lentils & Bread) that was served to the inmates because it looked most delicious. For every mischief that my sister and I got into, my mother had a story equivalent to where mischief makers were eventually put in jail.

No doubt, it was a tough job for my mother. It comprised of long hours, which got longer on festivals. The night shifts sometimes begun by a knock on the door at 3 am in the morning, or the out of town trips which were conveyed hours before they begun.

This is a special photograph to me because it is the most glamorous image of my mom that I can recollect and it is as special to her as well because she thinks the same.

This picture was photographed on the terrace of R.D Burman‘s home in Bombay.
R.D Burman was one of India’s finest Music composers of the Indian Film Industry. With him are my grand-uncle Nirmal Kumar Dasgupta and his wife Shukla.RD, whom he lovingly called Tublu, was the apple of my granduncle’s eye. RD loved him back equally calling him Moni Dadu. R.D Burman’s mother was my grand uncle’s sister, technically a niece, but since they were closer in age the relationship was like a close sibling.

In March of 1975, Moni Dadu and family were visiting R.D Burman. RD was busy recording the soundtrack for now India’s biggest box office hit film ever, Sholay. On this morning, sitting on his terrace, RD was playing back for Moni Dadu the scratch recording (rough recording) of his now exceptionally famous song Mehbooba Mehbooba. He had been recording the song through the night. RD had recorded the song in his own voice, even though the final song was to be recorded in Kishore Kumar‘s. Liking what he had just heard, Moni Dadu advised RD to keep the song in his voice.

As fate would have it, Moni Dadu’s wish was granted. Kishore Kumar was late for the recording of Mehbooba Mehbooba and RD decided to record the song himself. As we say the rest is history.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, R.D Burman composed scores for 331 movies. He served as a influence to the next generation of Indian music directors. He would have been 73 today, on June 27, 2012.

The picture, photographed sometime around 1910, is the childhood image of my grand-uncle Alec Cordeiro, fondly called Bunnu. Next to him is my Grand-aunt May and my Grandmother Beatrice.

It isn’t clear when and how exactly my ancestors got to Karachi, but it seems that they’d been there for four generations. Like most Goans, they left looking for work: the Portuguese didn’t establish any industry in Goa, so hundreds and thousands had to seek work in other places. There were sharp discussions in the family about whether our ancestor Santan Vaz had made his money running a liquor distributorship or a booze joint.

My paternal great-grandfather, Xavier Cordeiro, was a postmaster general in Karachi. His son-in-law, my grandfather, Alfred Fernandes, moved to Karachi from Burma during World War II. He’d been working for the Burma Railways and had to leave when the Japanese invaded in 1941. So he and his wife, my grandmother, Beatrice (standing right), decided to return to their family’s home in Karachi. In only a few years, the entire family pulled up their roots from the city in which they’d lived for four generations to take their chances in India, a few months before Partition in 1947.

Though my father was only nine when the family left Karachi, his elder siblings had more vivid memories : trips between Bombay and Karachi were made on ferries named the Saraswati and the Sabarmati (“they were like little tubs, we all got seasick”) ; relatives having leisurely evenings at the Karachi Goan Association (KGA), “gin and lime was the favourite drink”, and the enterprising nature of the Karachi Goan community -“they even owned a flour mill!” From my grandmother’s stories, it appeared that everyone in the family had spent a lot of time at the KGA. After all, it was right opposite their bungalow in Depot Lines. That bungalow, sold months before Partition, has long been replaced by a characterless block of apartments.

When we were children, my cousins and I could have been forgiven for thinking that our great-uncle’s first name was “Poor”. That, was how my grandmother and her sisters referred to their only brother each time he came up in conversation, “Ah, poor Bunnu,” they’d sigh whenever someone mentioned their Cambridge-educated sibling who’d chosen to stay put in Karachi at Partition. The somewhat embarrassed tone in which his three sisters talked about him left Bunnu obscured by a whiff of mystery—even scandal.

If there’s one thing I knew about Uncle Bunnu, it’s that he spent a great deal of time at the bar of KGA. Friends joked that the committee of Karachi Goan Association had once made a decision to sack the chowkidar (guard). He wasn’t really needed since Bunnu Cordeiro never seemed to leave the building.

When I finally made a visit to Karachi in November 2011, I met 92-year-old Rita de Souza. She’d been in school with all three of my grand-relatives. She displayed all the discretion you’d expect of a woman of her breeding, but under my badgering, was gradually lulled into talking about my great-uncle. “Ah, poor Bunnu,” she eventually sighed. “He was quite a talker.” She let slip an anecdote relating to the time Bunnu was at Cambridge in the 1920s. “He was disappointed in love,” Rita de Souza said. “He was quite keen on a woman when he was in England, but his mother heard of it and made him exit the situation post-haste.” That’s all she remembered about him.

Others too remembered Bunnu. “He’d tell us about the libraries in Cambridge, where you’d have to maintain pin-drop silence,” a third-cousin said. “‘What would happen if you had a cough?’ we’d ask. He’d reply, ‘If you had a cough, courtesy would require that you didn’t visit the library.’”

At one recent family get-together, the conversation turned to Bunnu. It would be difficult to send mail over the border after each India Pakistan war, so Bunnu’s letters were infrequent. But sometimes, perhaps to remind everyone of his real name, Alec, he’d sign himself as “Sikander”—the sub-continental name for Alexander the Great. “He called his three sisters ‘the gangsters’,” someone recalled. “When he was in England, they sent him a childhood photo of the four of them and he said, ‘I’m not coming home. If I do, I’ll have to take care of them.’”

My aunt Margaret corroborated the story I’d been told in Karachi. Evidently, Bunnu had refused to return to Karachi because he’d fallen in love with an Englishwoman. His mother, Mary, who wanted him to marry a Goan, was horrified. She “picked up her skirts and took the next boat to England”. The conclave was divided on what happened next. Either my great-grandmother “grabbed his ear and dragged him right back home” or “he sent her right home without even allowing her a day to see the sights, but promised to return soon”. At any rate, Bunnu was back in Karachi by the mid-1930s and would remain a KGA Bar fixture for the rest of his life.

Uncle Bunnu never married, held a job for long or seen his sisters after 1947. Later he moved into an old folks home in Karachi. No one in the extended family seemed to have a recent photograph of him. I’d always held the impression that Uncle Bunnu had drunk himself to death, but considering that he was 80 when he died, he didn’t do it very efficiently. By the time he passed away in 1984, Bunnu had become more like a hazy myth to his younger Indian relatives than a real person.

The old folks home in which Bunnu had spent his last years is located in one corner of Cincinnatus Town. Cincinnatus Town was unnervingly familiar. Many of the older homes had been built in the 1930s, exactly at the time the pocket of Bandra in which I live had been constructed and with the same coastal-city architectural features. Parts of Garden East (Cincinnatus Town) resembled the now-demolished landscapes of my childhood. They were filled with the kind of teakwood furniture you find in older Bombay homes and had identical Catholic iconography. My ancestors, yes, they’d been dead for decades, but as we discussed them in Bombay, six decades and 900 kms away, they were warm, breathing presences, as real and as resolute as Karachi.

In 1947, after partition, when my grandfather Nanikram Goklani and his wife Khemi migrated to India, along with their extended family from Karachi, Pakistan, they settled in Pune, Maharashtra with their 9 children. My mother Mohini, second of seven sisters, was just 16 at that time. Grandpa got a job in the Income Tax department and although times were tough, my grandfather made sure all the children received excellent education.

My mother and her older sister Sheela went to Nowrosjee Wadia College and my grandfather managed to procure admission for some of the younger children in reputed schools such as Sardar Dastur Hoshang Boys’ High School, and St. Helena’s School for Girls. The children studied well, they were voracious readers, and led a simple life.

During the 1950s, the sisters were well versed in household skills, especially the art of stitching and embroidery. They fashioned their own clothes, copying designs from magazines and the displays in the shop windows of Main Street. At home however, they maintained decorum and modesty, but ever so often, Duru, my mother’s younger sister, would coax her to go with her to a photo studio on Main Street called The Art Gallery to get their photographs taken. Duru would pack all kinds of stuff for both of them: ties and beads, scarves and skirts, hats and belts, not to forget some make-up, and the two of them would mount their bicycles and head for the studio where they indulged their fantasies, using studio props and their own accessories.

In the picture my mother is wearing “Awara pants”, a style made famous after the well known actor, Raj Kapoor’s movie by the same name. She is also very nonchalantly holding a cigarette, albeit unlit, between her fingers! The photograph is totally incongruous with her personality, for copying Nargis, the star actress of the time, was more my mom’s style whereas my aunt Duru was bolder and more tomboyish.

I don’t know if my grandfather knew what was going on, or if he approved, but he was not the kind of father who would scold any of his children. If he didn’t like something, he simply wrote a few words on a piece of paper and slipped the little note under that child’s pillow, which was enough to bring the rebellious offspring back on track… but that’s another story.

After college, my mother got a job at the Department of Cooperation, Government of Maharashtra. It was her first and last job. She retired in 1985 as Assistant Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Bombay.

This is the only image of my Late father Syed Ali Mehdi Naqvi I possess. He was born in 1930 in a small district called Beed then in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. In 1960, when new states were created on the basis of linguistics, the Marathi dominant town of Beed became a part of Maharashtra.

My father graduated from Usmania University, Hyderabad (now Osmania) in Masters of Persian when he was only 18, in 1949.

My grandfather Hassan Naqvi was a lawyer with the High Court of the Nizam of Hyderabad at the time and also owned a lot of agricultural land in Pimpalwadi (District Beed, Now in Maharashtra). Agriculture was a big part of the family income.

When Partition of India and Pakistan was announced, my grandfather was still very optimistic that Hyderabad will be declared an independent state. The Nizam of Hyderabad was very adamant about that. But the Indian Government did not comply and the Nizam had to surrender in 1948.

With a lot of sorrow, and seeing no other option in a very precarious India, my grandparents along with their children were finally forced to join thousands of others and leave India in 1955. All of our assets, a house at Muhalla Qila as well as the cultivated agricultural land were left behind, abandoned.

They migrated to Karachi via Bombay on a ship. With our roots, and legacies all left behind, my family had to go through a lot of hurt, disillusionment and suffering. Consequences of which can be felt till today. In my family’s words “we were simply plucked and sent into a dark and dangerous journey to Pakistan with no home, no job or even land to call our own.” Many people along with them, never made it to the shores of Pakistan and many were killed right after they landed.

I feel great sorrow when I think about that. Now I work in a financial institution as a manager in a Punjab province of Pakistan with my mother and two siblings. In all these years, I have never stopped thinking about what could have been.

This image of maternal grandfather, Shri Manikchand Veerchand Shah and our extended family was photographed in November 1956, by the famous ‘Malage Photographer – Oriental Photo Studio’ who charged a tidy sum of 30-0-0 (Rupee-Anna-Paise) for two Black & White 6” x 8”copies with embossed-border mounts. The occasion was my grandfather’s birthday, he had just turned 60.

The family was photographed in the front yard of the bungalow called ‘Ratnakuti’ opposite the Fort in Solapur (then Sholapoor), Maharashtra. Ratnakuti was one of twin bungalows built around 1932 as mirror images of each other, known as ‘Jod-Bangla’. Beautifully crafted in stone and plaster, with imposing pillars, balconies and rooms with ceramic-chip handcrafted flooring, exquisite teak, brass grills for windows, coloured glass panes on windows and doors, verandahs with neat terracotta tiles, a large court-yard in front, ‘Ratnakuti’ and its twin would never fail to draw the attention of passers-by and stands to this day as a well known landmark. Eventually, the two bungalows were sold and are now owned by the Goyal family.

My grandfather, Manikchand Veerchand Shah, born in 1896, came from a pioneering and visionary GujaratiDigambar Jain family. He was a self-educated, successful entrepreneurial man with modest beginnings. Before 1910, he along with his younger brother, Walchand Motichand Shah, worked in a Saree shop of their guardian where they got paid One Paisa for every saree they neatly folded, ready for dispatch or sale and delivered on a bicycle to the shop at Phaltan Galli.

As they grew up together, my grandfather and his brother established and operated several businesses together complementing each other’s strengths. The businesses included a handloom cloth dyeing unit, in Valsang, near Solapur, for which the dyes were imported from Japan. They also began importing General Motors cars, motorcycles and trucks around 1922. I am told my grandfather would drive and deliver the imported truck chassis himself from Bombay to Pune and Sholapur. Their firm ‘Sholapur Motor Stores’ continues on in Pune, albeit only as a Fuel Station. He also established the well-known ‘India Garage’ in the 1930s where the present showrooms of Renault and Volkswagen stand, still operated by the family.

Closely associated with the freedom movement in Solapur, opposing the Martial Law imposed in 1930, he was arrested by the British, sent to Bijapur Central Jail and later exiled. Not to be outdone by the British, he used his stay at Bijapur Jail to monitor the establishment of a ‘Sholapur Motor Stores’ branch in the city.

Also associated with the Hindu Mahasabha, he rubbed shoulders with very important personalities like V. D. Savarkar, Dr. K. B. Hedgewar, M. S. Golwalker Guruji and Gulabchand Hirachand Doshi. While he was also deeply involved with several causes for the people of Valsang, unfortunately, owing to his association with the Hindu Mahasabha, an irate mob of villagers from Valsang set his car on fire in a frenzied reaction to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948. Barely managing to escape with his life, he was deeply hurt and disillusioned by the senseless act by the people of Valsang. In consequence, he wound up his businesses and left Valsang, never to return.

After the death of his wife, my grandmother, when he was just 34, and as a sign of love for her, he changed his attire to only pristine white – a white turban, coat and a dhoti with white canvas pump shoes. While visiting us in Hyderabad, he would regularly buy the special black metal ‘Bidriware’ buttons for his white coats from a handicraft showroom at Abid Road.

My grandfather was a man of many parts. He was the Director on the Board of Bank of Maharashtra Ltd. As well as on the governing council for several religious and temple trusts. His contribution to the educational infrastructure development from his own funds at Solapur is widely acknowledged. He offered personal loans, scholarships and donor’s seats at the Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli for students pursuing higher studies in the 1950s and 60s. Several successful senior Engineers owe their careers to him.

Farming, Gardening, and Photography were his passions. I remember us youngsters gathering on his farms near Sholapur during summer holidays and enjoying the juiciest mangoes to our brim. Quite taken up with Photography as well, he had acquired a glass-negative Camera in the 1920s and his collection of glass negatives and pictures are our family’s priceless treasures.

My grandfather passed away in June 1968. Many members of the two older generations of the three appearing in the pictures have also passed on. The third generation now have their own children and grand-children. I feel very honoured to have shared some of the birthday celebrations along with my grandfather as we were both born only a few days apart.

Time moves on, but photographs manage to freeze fleeting moments here and there. If we could preserve these photographs, we succeed in reliving those moments over and over again and again.

Kamala Vijayakar, my grandmother (sitting, center) was born in 1890 in a well-to-do Pathare Prabhu family in Bombay. Pathare Prabhus are the original residents of the Bombay Islands along with the Agaris, the Bhandaris and the Kolis since 700 years. They are known to be a small, close-knit, and a 100 % literate community. Kamala was a bright student of the Alexandra Girls’ School. She passed her Matriculation exam in 1910 and joined St. Xavier’s College for higher education the same year. She was ”the first Hindu girl student” of this esteemed college. She excelled in higher studies and was preparing for the First Year Arts examination when she got engaged to Mr. Narayan Vijaykar, who was an artist but non-matriculate. According to the prevalent norms, the wife could never be more educated than the husband, so she had to give up college education, start family life, raising children and fulfilling the duties of a good housewife.

Settled in Malad, a distant suburb in Bombay, she began taking a keen interest in the Local District Board activities and the emancipation of women around her. She was a fluent and forceful speaker in English, and was appointed as the Honorary Magistrate at Malad. A lady Magistrate was a major novelty in those days and people would throng the courts when she delivered her judgments. When she left her home to go to the courts, people would stand on both sides of the road just ”to see ” how a lady magistrate looked. She had long innings at the Malad District Court. Kamalabai Vijaykar was appointed ”Justice of Peace ” (Honorary Magistrate) by the government, and she later became popular as ”J. P. Kamalabai ” all over Bombay. She was also a staunch Congress-woman.

All her life, she held Education dear to her heart. Her own children, 7 in all, fulfilled her own dream of becoming Graduates and Double-graduates. She lived long enough to see even her grandchildren become double graduates. She breathed her last on 8th August, 1972, at the ripe old age of 82, content in the knowledge that she had done her bit to empower at least some women around her by providing for their education.

This was an image taken at my christening at the Sacred Heart Church in Santa Cruz, Bombay. My father had invited 100 people to celebrate that I, a girl was born 9 years after 2 boys. My brothers even got the day off school.

It was tradition in Goa to have at least one son carry the family name and another follow priesthood. My father Jose Luis Alvaro Remedios, from Saligao, Goa was to become a priest, since his older brother Hubert had moved to Bombay to pursue his Masters at St Xavier’s College. Hubert, unfortunately died of Typhoid around the 1940’s and my father had to leave the Seminary. However, The Seminary takes you through a tough academic route which covers both main stream subjects and theological studies. Perhaps his significant learning was that of Latin, which I regret I did not learn from my Father. However I think my love for history, academia and music is inextricably linked to my Father’s genes.

My father moved to Bombay to look for a job. He began working with Reserve Bank of India, and held the job for 38 odd years until he retired as the Asst. Financial Controller. He met my mum, Maria Aida Bertila Silveira from St. Mathias, Goa, through a formal proposal. My Mum was 30 years old and he was 35 when they got married. They lived in Byculla for the early years and then moved to the Reserve Bank Quarters in Santa Cruz. My Mum was a home maker and raised 2 boys and a girl, me.

My father’s best kept secret was that he was keenly interested in our own family’s past and actively pursued to construct a family tree for almost 25 years. His research was so thorough that it would have certainly gained him an M.Phil in Historical & Contextual Studies, even though everything is documented in a narrative fashion. He traced the history of our family to 1500s and found that we belonged to a community called the Goud Saraswat Brahmins; and had the family name ‘Bhatt’. It is between the 1500s-1700s that from ‘Bhatt’ we changed our last name to ‘Tavara’ and from ‘Tavara’ we converted to Catholicism with the Portuguese last name Remedios during Portuguese India reign. My parents too were born during the Portuguese rule. Their generation and the generation that follows; of my relatives, all live in Goa, apart from the few who moved to Lisbon, Portugal. They speak impeccable Portuguese, and can be more Portuguese than Goan at times, which is amusing.

During a short posting to Delhi, my father decided to change our surname from Remedios to Rau because he was exasperated that everyone there called us either Ramdas, Ramdeo or Ramlal. He also felt that having an Indian last name would stand us in good stead in a Hindutva nation. So while I was born Wanda Noemia Remedios, he changed it to Wanda Naomi Rau. Naomi is the English name for Noemia; which is Portuguese.

This picture of my grandparents was taken on a trip to Delhi, Jaipur and Agra. A route known to tourists as the The Golden Triangle. My grandparents, Rukaya and Sultan Dossal were married in 1949 in the city of Bombay. They had met a few years earlier, when my grandmother Rukaya compelled him to buy a theatre ticket she had volunteered to sell, unaware that this expense of Rs. 10 was one he could then ill afford. The story of their early courtship is one of my favourites. Here it is, recorded in her own words in a memoir she wrote for her grandchildren, 60 odd years later:

‘Needless to say that I was quite struck by Sultan and I remember coming home and telling Saleha (sister) that I had met a very handsome man, but most probably he must be married. I was greatly relieved sometime later when I learnt that he wasn’t. I suppose, Sultan must have been duly impressed as well because he made every attempt to see me. As he told me later, he would leave his office at Flora Fountain at a particular time to catch me walking down from Elphinstone College towards Churchgate Station and to me it seemed that it was just a happy chance. We would then have coffee at Coffee House.

I avoided going to movies with him but one day when we met by chance in a bus and he was getting down at the next stop, I told him I’d like to go to the movies with him and we decided on meeting at Metro the next day to see “Arsenic and Old Lace”. On coming home I was stunned to be told be told by Baba (father) that we would be going to Kihim the next day. I tried to make all excuses to be left behind but Baba would not hear of it, so I could not keep my appointment with Sultan and there was no way of my letting him know. Naturally, he must have thought the worst of me, and naturally I was miserable on this first trip to Kihim. Fortunately, my connection with Sultan as also with Kihim did not end there. In fact, it is in Kihim just now that I am writing this….’

At the very end of her story, when asked to note the most exciting part of her life, she wrote ‘the most exciting thing that happened to me was coming across Sultan’.

The beautiful woman seen here is Sharda Pandit, a scion of a Maharashtrian aristocratic family in the earlier half of the 20th century. She was born in Rajkot, Gujarat. She was hailed as the ‘Beauty Queen’ of Elphinstone College of Bombay, in fact of all collegians of the city; because Bombay (now Mumbai) had only three colleges at that time – Elphinstone, Wilson and St. Xavier’s. She possessed a kind of serene beauty, singular charm and grace. Her contemporaries from other colleges would drop by just to have a glimpse of this icon of beauty. Not only was she beautiful to look at, she possessed a beautiful heart, too.

At that time, there were only a handful of women students in the colleges, most of whom were from middle class families. Sharda would get along amicably with everyone despite her wealthy family background. She acted as the heroine of several plays during the college years, for the Annual College Day functions.

Sharda and my mother, Kamini Vijaykar were classmates and that is how I came to know about her.

Later on, Sharda married Subroto Mukherjee, the first Air Chief Marshal of the Indian Air Force in 1939. After his untimely death in 1960, she devoted herself to social service and political activism. For some time, she was also the Governor of Andhra Pradesh from 1977-1978 and then the Governor of Gujarat from 1978 to 1983. She kept herself busy with several constructive activities. She was beyond 90 years of age when she passed away, but preserved her inner and outer beauty till the very last.

I first learned of the Indian Memory Project from an article in ‘The Australian’ of May 2011 (a News Ltd daily newspaper). After visiting the website, it occurred to me that others searching the pages might be interested in a brief glimpse of Indian Army life from the viewpoint of a British officer and his family in 1945-46. It may shed a personal light on that brief moment in time just before the watershed of Independence and the bloody shambles the politicians made of partition.

This images is of my parents taken on 23rd April 1946, and it show them at the top of the Kohat Pass, near Tribal Territory. My mother is wearing a revolver!. On the back of some of these photographs, she has captioned them as ‘the gateway to 30 miles of tribal territory’.

My father Ronald Osborne was born in Wales in 1910 and worked as sales manager in London for Geo. Wimpey & Co., then a large builder of houses. He volunteered for the British Army in 1939 just before universal conscription was introduced. He served initially with the Royal Engineers and fought in the abortive Norway campaign before undergoing commando training and going on the far more successful Lofoten Islands raid to destroy an oil refinery held by the German forces. Selected for officer training, he found that the pay in the Indian Army was higher than in the British forces and chose to be commissioned into the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, serving in the North African and Italian campaigns, where he rose to the rank of major, until the Indian Army was repatriated.

My mother Beryl (née Beardsley) was also born in 1910 and grew up in Derbyshire. She moved to London as a young woman where she met and married my father. I was born in 1934. When my father joined the army, we went to live with her parents in Kingston-upon-Thames, where they owned two shops. At some point in 1940 a stray German bomb destroyed the shops and my mother, grandmother and I moved to stay with relations in Derbyshire before settling in a small village called Kirk Hallam. My grandfather stayed in Kingston, continuing to run his shops from two garages.

Understandably impatient after five years of wartime separation, my mother joined the Women’s Indian Voluntary Service (WIVS) as a means of getting out to India. By coincidence, she and my father were on separate ships passing through the Suez Canal at the same time (I think in September 1945). They met briefly when their ships docked in Bombay, before travelling to their respective postings. Initially she worked in the WIVS headquarters in New Delhi, organising the postings of other British volunteers as they arrived. Seeing little point in staying in New Delhi while my father was stationed in Jalandhar, she surreptitiously posted herself there! At some time in 1946, my father’s unit was transferred to Kohat.

In 1945, I was 11 years old, attending a boarding school in Leicester in the UK Midlands and spending school holidays with my maternal grandparents in Kingston-upon-Thames or with my father’s brother’s family in Porthcawl, South Wales. Sadly I no longer have any of the letters from my parents, so the story of their time in Jalandhar and Kohat is based solely on my memory and the scribbled captions on the backs of old, fading black-and-white photographs in the album I began to compile that year.

The following text is the story my Bua, (father’s siser) Veena Sajnani narrated to me while flipping through her photo albums.“I was a fashion model in the year 1970 and toured with the Femina group all over India doing fashion shows for textile firms and others. Our salary was Rs. 150/- per show and after 20 shows we would go home with a princely sum of Rs. 3000/-. We were only 10 models and we knew each other well, we travelled together and had a lot of fun.

One such day that year, when rehearsals for fashion shows had begun, I was told I was no longer required for the show. Very upset and being a newbie with all the hotshot models of Bombay, I presumed it was because I had made a mistake and therefore had been kicked out.

But no. Apparently the call for Miss India 1970 had been announced and I was selected to participate in the Beauty Pageant. Funny part was, I hadn’t even applied for it! I then found out that Meher Mistry and Persis Khambatta (the original Super Models of India) who were close friends, had filled in the Miss India application form for me because they felt I had a chance to win.

Once I accepted the fact that I was in the pageant, I ran home and told my sister to come shopping with me. On a limited budget, we bought a sari, an Emerald green chiffon with gold work and it looked lovely under the stage lights. Bombay, being the cinema city, had tailors stitching sari blouses within hours so while my sister and I shopped around, my blouse was ready.

Before the day of the pageant, we were asked to come to the Times of India office terrace (parent company of Femina) with a swim-suit and be photographed in it, because in those days, judges looked at pictures instead of the actual girls in swim-suits; and we were saved the embarrassment of coming out on stage in swim-suits. Instead, during the interval, the judges came backstage to check us out and since it was dark they had flashlights and our photos in their hands! Yes, it was very funny indeed. We all giggled through the ordeal but in retrospect it was better than walking out half naked under full lights- a very scary prospect to say the least.

Persis and Meher on the other hand, were walking for the fashion show on the contest day and were most enthusiastic about my winning. So much so that Persis decided to do some sleuthing to find out how I was faring with the judges. She was perceptive and sharp, so each time she went out on the ramp she would peek into the judges’ notes! She must have had X-Ray vision because she said she could see the ratings and it was number 6, my number! We all pooh-poohed but sure enough when the winner was announced it was indeed number 6! Me. Veena Sajnani.

Needless to say my two partners in crime were thrilled to bits. After all I had beaten Zeenat Aman (who later became a very famous movie star), whom I think they did not like very much. Whatever the case maybe, I was happy for them and for myself for joining the elite band of Miss Indias. And I will always remember them fondly for this adventure.”

After her stay at Miami for the Miss Universe pageant, my Bua continued with her modelling, then worked at Madura Coats, post which she found her true love – Theatre.

This is an image of my father on 20 Jan, 1937, in DJ Sind College, Karachi. The photograph is courtesy the College (which now stands in Pakistan) where my father was a Professor of Mathematics till 1945. It shows a scene from Rabindra Nath Tagore‘s play “Dak Ghar” (Post Office) which was staged by the teaching staff of the College in Karachi in 1937 during their 20 year celebrations. Here my father is in the role of Gaffar. I presume the play was translated in English, because the cast was all non-Bengali, in fact, most of them are Sindhis. In 1930s, Tagore had himself acted in ‘Dak Ghar‘ as Gaffar, the same role that my father played.

My father and his wife, Sushila moved from Karachi to Delhi via Bombay, in September 1947 during partition, with me, my younger sister Indu and youngest brother Gul. We lived there for 10 years. My father got a job in the Ministry of Commerce & Industry due to his mastery in Statistics as in those days Statistics was not a very commonly studied subject. I studied Math, got married, taught Math, and by a string of happenstances got involved in the Kantha revival, 25 years ago. In 2009/2010 I began depicting scenes from Tagore’s pictures through the medium of Kantha, where I sat with my women aritsans and artists from the villages of Bengal. I am now 73 and have lived in Kolkata since 1962.